The Best Standardized Measure of College and Career Readiness Currently Available
Between 1926 and today, the test was “redesigned” only once, in 2005. When the University of California threatened to dump the old SAT because it was statistically weak and socially biased, the College Board kept them hanging on by promising a better test – one that would be predictively more powerful and without the social disparities of the old test.
Instead, the 2005 SAT has been a failure on all counts. The new SAT dropped the dripping-with-social-bias verbal analogies and added an easily coached writing section. It took more time, was more expensive, predicted even less well than the old one, and managed to magnify social disparities. Racial, gender, and socioeconomic status test score gaps widened, instead of narrowing. Nonetheless, the College Board proclaimed the new SAT a success; everything was supposedly rocket-science perfect, until Coleman’s letter last week.
